I have a love/hate relationship with books.

I guess it’s mostly a love for them, but now and then, I look at the overflowing bookshelves in my house that seem to collect more dust than should be possible and I just want to start throwing them into the donation box. I never seem to have as much time to read them as I would like so they just represent one more thing that I want to do but can’t make the time for.

This week, we’re going to find some motivation to declutter the books, where to get rid of them, and what to do with the ones you decide to keep. If you’re like me, the books are still flowing into the house even as you fill a box of them to donate. Books are one item that I usually don’t mind having a lot of, as long as they fit on the shelves that we currently have. I refuse to go out and buy more bookshelves so that I can store more of them.

One of the main reasons for the number of books we own is because many years ago I worked at the corporate office of Borders Books. I couldn’t resist when a fresh cart load of free books, magazines, and CDs would show up in the cafeteria. Not long ago I decluttered our CD collection and was amazed at how many I had picked up at Borders and never even listened to. Some were still in plastic.

CDs that haven’t been opened in 10 years are a pretty easy thing to ditch, but how do we convince ourselves to reduce the number of books we own? Here’s a few suggestions.

How many lifetimes would it take you to read all of them? One day, I was looking at just one of the bookshelves we have filled and counted the number of books. I can’t remember how many it was, but let’s say there are a hundred books. Even if you read one a week (I know people who can do this, but I’m not one of them), that’s two years worth of reading just on that one shelf. Multiply that by the three bookshelves just like it in the rest of the house and you have several years worth of reading ahead of you. Never mind any new books or magazines that you want to read in that time.

Are they being stored properly? What if something happens to them? A couple of years ago as spring rolled around, my kids were doing something outside that required the garden hose. I went out and connected it for them and turned it on. Then I went inside the house and thought the water sounded funny. You can always hear it running through the pipes when we turn on one of the outside spigots, but this sounded different. I opened the basement door and it sounded as if it was raining in the basement. It was. Apparently, the pipe had frozen over the winter and cracked just inside the basement. I ran down the stairs and water was spraying right onto our book shelf and even better, a trunk full of hundred year old books from my grandparent’s attic was sitting in a puddle. Fortunately, most everything survived but some of the books on the shelf had water damage. A pile of old notebooks from grad school bore the brunt of the deluge and I threw them all out. They needed to go anyway. This lesson taught me that I need to be more careful in how I store my books.

How many have you read once and will never read again? I have just a few books that I can think of that I have read more than once and I will never part with them. For the rest though, if you have read it and enjoyed it, why not pass it along for someone else to enjoy? Honestly, if you really want to read it again someday, you can most likely get it from the library or a used book sale.

Do I have it or can I get it in digital form? I’m not a huge fan of eBooks but I do have some and you can’t beat the convenience for storage and portability. I always have at least a couple saved on my phone for when I have time to read. I also have an app called Overdrive that allows me to check out eBooks from my local library. If you haven’t looked into borrowing eBooks from your library, I highly encourage you to do it. If nothing else, it’s a great way to see if it’s worth buying a hard copy of the book.

Are your kids outgrowing their books? If you have kids, their reading level and interests are constantly changing. We’ve been getting rid of the board books since our youngest is six. Also, since our only daughter is the middle child, we’ve donated some of the “girly” books that our youngest son has no interest in. Don’t get me wrong. If he wants to read princess books he can and I don’t care. He wasn’t interested in her Pinkalicious books though. (He did ride her old pink princess bike for a couple of summers and was very proud of it.)

So you’re ready to declutter the book collection, but what do you do with them?

This post is getting too long, so next time I’ll give you more details on what to do with them as well as some tips for properly storing the books you decide you just can’t part with. Here’s a quick list though to get started.

The obvious place to take your extra books is the local library but I would also encourage you to donate to other organizations and to check with friends and relatives. When we cleared out some of the old board books, we brought them to church and gave them to a young couple starting their family. Another idea would be to start your own Little Free Library in your yard. If you would rather sell them, there’s always Facebook, Craigslist, etc.

Good luck.

I know books can be a tough thing to part with for many people but remember the value is in the story or information contained in the book, not in holding on to the physical book itself. Read it. Then pass it on unless you really are going to read it again.

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